Chinese rover begins its journey to monetize the moon (with video)

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The Chinese space push is in full swing, but the CNSA (Chinese NASA) is nowhere near ready to compete in terms of PR. When Chang’e 3 — China’s first lunar rover — rolled from its lander this week, it made its country one of just three to ever drive a lander on the Moon. In celebration of the event, Chinese national news services broadcast some incredible live video of the rover (named Yutu, which means “Jade Rabbit”). However, the video does not seem to have been released to anyone but the Chinese media, and right now the internet has no adequate recording we can find. Two reports show the lander begin from two different angles, though both are low quality. Check out the videos below; fuzzy or not, they really are something.

Yutu rode to the Moon aboard China’s Chang’e 3 mission. The Chang’e series has been the standard-bearer for the Chinese space program for some time, and it will continue to be for at least two more missions. There are two more rovers planned, each with a different mission to research and survey. The ultimate goal is to land a Taikonaut (Chinese astronaut) on the Moon, and beyond that to set up a permanent lunar base. Their timeline for doing this isn’t so far removed from NASA’s musings about a mission to Mars. As the American space agency tries to drum up support for a mission to another planet, its Chinese counterpart could undercut them by focusing on a base much more likely to have economic benefits.

In fact, that’s a large part of China’s motivation to explore the Moon: the economic benefits. When the Apollo astronauts collected moon rocks for study, there was only the vaguest of ideas about the possible resources for exploitation. Now, this rover has an explicit mission to (among other things) survey the Moon for helium-3, a rare element that could be a clean, easily used fuel for nuclear fusion reactors. Only about 15 tons of the stuff is thought to exist on Earth, but estimates for the total compliment of the isotope on Luna range up to five million tons. A leader of the Chinese lunar program estimated that about 100 tons could provide for the world’s current energy needs for one year. Assuming we could extract 100% of that five million tons, that’s quite a bit of time to come up with the next stop-gap energy solution.

The Moon is also known to be home to rich deposits of titanium and other precious metals, and there’s no telling what other, unexpected wonders it might hold. Another lander on schedule for 2017 will attempt to collect and bring back rock and soil samples for analysis, and you can bet traces of precious or useful materials are first on their list of targets. China has said that it plans to spend the next couple of decades scouring our only satellite for helium-3 and anything else worthwhile, possibly securing an energy-independent future for China — that is, assuming fusion comes into its own and that the United States chooses to quietly accept Chinese dominance of the lunar oil fields. This is the stuff of which world wars and science fiction epics are made. Below is a video of the lander’s initial approach, in much higher quality than the footage above.

Yutu is equipped with a ground penetrating radar (GPR) that can probe several hundred meters into the Moon’s crust, and a spectrometer for basic sample analysis. That’s useless, of course, unless we find a more cost-effective way of getting material to and from the Moon. A space elevator would probably work best, but at present that’s almost as harebrained an idea as fusion itself. Perhaps the country’s population problems have made long-term problems more difficult to ignore, but the Chinese space agency appears to see the value of long-term investments and, if you’ll pardon the expression, moonshots.

Purely on its merits today, the Moon is anything but an investor’s dream. Still, an advantage based on the moon would be trivially easy to keep under a monopoly, and to exploit for extreme economic benefit.

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I may be ignorant or something, but wouldn’t changing the moon’s mass or size or weight or whatever be bad for the earth? The tides are controlled by the moon. If we start mining the moon I can only think of bad things happening. Maybe mining for gases wouldn’t be too bad, but there’s a lot more than gases there.

Sure a couple hundred tons at first probably won’t hurt much, but a couple hundred tons turns into a few hundred, which turns into a few thousand, which turns into a full fledged strip mining operation.

ScoobiJohn

realistically we could never mine enough material from the moon to make the slightest difference – it might not look it but the moon is really quite large

marasm

Probably not in our lifetimes, sure. But once humans establish a mining presence on the moon (or any major planet in our system for that matter), in time we will be able to move the mined material more efficiently, and therefore requiring more to be mined.

Maybe required is the wrong word. But we will realize we can move more of the mined material more and more efficiently, and can then mine more and more.

All I’m saying is mining the moon isn’t the greatest idea because as we progress we will be able to do more.

If any of that makes any sense.

Joel Detrow

You don’t understand how mining works. In most cases, the useful amount extracted from rock is just a small fraction of the total amount of material that’s mined. It’s known as the Stripping Ratio. Even a massive, moon-wide mine would only actually remove a small portion of the moon’s mass. It’s inconsequential. Even if operations did become that large, science would still be there to let us maintain the planetary status quo.

Sasori

Japan’s stripping ratio sucks.

Joel Detrow

Some would argue any stripping still counts regardless of mosaic pixelation, but it would seem you and I agree – it sucks! :D

Nerdsamwich

Would it really matter if the tides evened out? Other than tide-pool ecology changing, I can’t see how anything would be affected.

Joel Detrow

Do a little research on why we need the moon. Its presence stabilizes our axis of rotation, and the weather. Losing the moon entirely would wreck the earth’s ecology on a global scale.

If we ever reach the point there we mine the moon to the point where the mass decreases should be a concern for your children and grandchildren.

Sasori

yea, dude, that’s their problem, not ours.

massau

we could dump our depleted uranium and other dangerous waste there to keep our mass in balance? it would be ? win win, no moon/earth balance difference and we have lost some of our dangerous waste.

Justin

The transportation costs are enormous and putting highly radioactive material in a spaceship to get it there is not the best idea, considering all the things that can go wrong.

massau

it is a solution but i never said it was the best one. if we had rockets/ space elevators or so that is cheap has a very high payload AND had a success rate of >99.9999 (1 out of million fails) and a strong packaging than we could do this. but burring it deep into the ground might be as good.

Justin

Instead of putting it on the moon, why not just blast it into the sun?

massau

reason was to keep the moon/earth mass balanced. but you could shoot it to the sun instead.

Justin

oh right, the other posters already spoke to that, regarding the enormous mass and how little we would be able to mine… and our waste, while it seems like a lot is also very little mass in comparison to the earth or moon

Sasori

you just have to add an ejector seat, goofball.

VirtualMark

Are you serious? The moon’s mass is 7.34767309 × 10^22 kilograms…

VedX

It’s interesting that from over 10 posts in response, only yours and ScoobiJohn’s show that the writer has any basic scientific common sense.

VirtualMark

It’s a shame really. After reading a few of the comments here I’d bet that some people still think the moon is made of cheese.

Sasori

what is it made of?

Richard

Not unless Megatron takes a huge bite out of it……….

adamrussell

If it were possible to eventually change the moons mass, I dont think there would be any ill effects on the earth. Smaller tides is the only effect I could think of, and I really dont see that being something to worry about.

Sasori

… and your credentials are?

massau

will they drive to the place where NASA landed and look if there is a flag/flag pole?

ScoobiJohn

no not to take a look, but to knock it over…………… :)

VedX

Space tourism. They get a passport stamp when they get there.

bridgebuilder78

Why waste a trip when there is nothing to be found there?

ScottCA

Mining the moon is a very foolish proposition.

adamrussell

Ironic that the worlds biggest Communist country is planning to be the first to drive space exploration via capitalism.

Justin

Well, we (US) did privatize the rocket industry. Space X, for example, has been a huge success. They’ve been able to drastically reduce costs with reusable rockets. If it’s cost effective, then we will see private business foot the costs to do mining in space. I would rather it be them at risk than our tax money. Obama was never a huge propent of the space industry. With the upcoming 2016 election, we may see a change in policy towards space exploration.

BTW, a better example of irony = “Look how free China is”

Giorgio Jørgensen

What I like is the moon surface seems to be brownish rather than gray…as I have been used to think. I know im ignorant. But I like it. Go China :-D

Sasori

yea, because the camera is clearly color-balanced.
duh

kzin53

Hey, looks like the Chinese are using the same studio set NASA did. They must have bought it at some point.

ignaciopxm321

My Uncle Nathaniel recently got a nearly
new red Chrysler 200 Sedan only from working part time off a home pc… find
out this here B­i­g­2­9­.­ℂ­o­m

Sasori

So, China wants to provide electricity to the world?

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